As it has been discussed before, the website no longer generates revenue large enough to have multiple authors/staffs involved. But contrary to what I had expected, small ad revenue, enough to pay for maintenance, is still coming in.

That being said, as much as I would like to pull out all of the ads for faster loading and distraction-free reading experience, this is unlikely to happen anytime soon. But for the same reason, I am inclined not to incorporate any anti-adblock measures that are commonly available. I will lay out my argument in a separate op-ed piece.

Now since then, many of the ads have been wiggled around. Most of the advertising space has not been changed on a desktop environment (or landscape mode), but a lot has changed on mobile, and truth be told, I’ve made some judgement calls. Contrary to a workstation setup, on mobile, you can actively choose not to allocate spaces for advertising. This control comes from the limitation of a mobile environment; neither the user nor the developers have full control of a mobile, considering the physical device must fit into one’s hands. Google has made several page-level ad solutions for mobile that can tackle exact problems I just described. Please do let me know if any of these new advertisements prove to be invasive.

I’ve briefly went over the 800 words rule in the last blog post; 800 words for op-ed, 400 words for the rest, information-related posts. These are minimum words I am looking for in any future submission, and the plan also revolves the around the idea of retroactively applying the 800 words rule. But this is not a requirement that must be fulfilled; it is a rule of thumb to see if the literature is parsed enough to imitate a discussion. I may end up updating “About Us” page on the 800 words.

note Dec 1, 2017: Originally the post, published on Nov 18th, 2015, briefly discussed the financials and changing posting policies behind the hosting of The Mad Tea Party. The post has been republished to reflect the most recent news, and the original post has since been retitled, “Nov 18, 2015”.